Seymour Simon's Blog, page 37

Writing Wednesday: Leap Year

Welcome to Writing Wednesday and Happy Leap Day! Every week there is a new opportunity to publish your own creative writing on the Seymour Science blog. This week, we are asking you to use your writing to help your friends understand Leap Year. The Facts: A leap year is a year when an extra day is added at the end of the month of February. This happens approximately every four years. We have a leap year because a standard year is not actually exactly 365 days long - it's 365.2422 days long. That is the number of days that it takes our planet Earth to make a full rotation around the sun. A long time ago - 46 B.C. exactly - the Roman emperor Julius Caesar realized that we had a problem. If we kept counting the year as only 365 days, that leftover .2422 days would start to add up. Gradually, over hundreds of years, our calendar would slip, until we'd be having a summery month like July happen in winter. So, Julius Ceasar brought in a group of scientists who figured out that if we added a day every four years, we would keep our seasons on track. This became known as the Julian calendar, which pretty much the whole world still uses today.Your assignment: Write a paragraph explaining Leap Year to your fellow Earthlings! How to make your writing powerful: Read and re-read the three paragraphs above. What are the most important details to include if you are explaining Leap Year to someone? Which words do you think are important to include? When you are finished writing, click on the yellow "Comments" at the bottom of this post to enter your writing. Happy Leap Day! Use your ExtraLeapDay to learn about the Solar System with Seymour Science! 30% off planetary eBooks until March 2nd for all Earthlings!

Would You Brush These Teeth?!

Today's "Cool Photo of the Week" shows the caretaker at a crocodile breeding center in Nepal brushing the teeth of a narrow snouted crocodile. This endangered species is bred in captivity and released into the wild once they can live on their own. Photo: Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters

Poisonous vs.Venomous

On a recent blog post about Snakes, I received this very smart comment from one of our readers: Dear Seymour Simon, I read your SNAKES book and I found a mistake! Snakes are venomous, not poisonous. Venomous means to inject venom and poisonous means to touch or absorb it. I learned this at Lake Pleasant in Arizona. It was my field trip. My name is Jack R. I'm a student at Wildfire Elementary School in Phoenix, Arizona. I still love snakes and reptiles. Thank you, Jack, for taking the time to write. You clearly learned a lot on your field trip! In fact, I have received several letters lately because one of my old favorites, a book called POISONOUS SNAKES, has just been re-published. Since it is a book for kids and almost all kids (as well as adults) refer to snakes as ‘poisonous' or ‘non-poisonous', we decided to use that term in the title of the book when I wrote it years ago. These are also the words used in searches by kids. So, my intention was not to deceive anyone or use incorrect words, only to make the book easier for kids to fine, and to plainly label what the book is about if they were to look it up. Jack is correct, though. Venom is injected by snakes and other animals, and poison is ingested (eaten), like when birds eat some kinds of butterflies. So technically, snakes are not poisonous or non-poisonous….they are either venomous or non-venomous. Here are two examples, to help you understand the difference. This is such a beautiful photograph of a lionfish, but you can't always trust your eyes. This lionfish is venomous and dangerous to humans as well as other marine animals, because it uses those sharp spines to inject paralyzing venom. A monarch butterfly, on the other hand, is poisonous because its larva eats milkweed, which contains a poisonous chemical. If a bird or other predator eats a monarch, it eats the poison. But you can touch a monarch without any danger - you're safe as long as you don't swallow it!Notice that both the lionfish and the monarch have bright colors and patterns on their bodies. These are known as "warning colors," which keep predators away.

Cool Video: Solar Twisters

The latest period of heavy solar flares erupting on the surface of the sun continues (as do the beautiful auroras that they create for us to see here on Earth). Solar flares are actually great bursts of superheated plasma. There is a NASA satellite that can capture amazingly detailed images of the sun's surface, and scientists pieced together photographs snapped every five minutes to create this amazing video of recent solar activity. Each of the loops of plasma that you see in this video is two to three times larger than Earth. What an amazing sight!You can see more photographs and learn more in Seymour Simon's book, THE SUN.

Writing Wednesday: Owl in Flight

Welcome to Writing Wednesday! Every week there is a new opportunity to publish your own creative writing on the Seymour Science blog. This week, we are asking you to describe this barn owl in flight. Background: Most owls have broad wings which have quite a large surface in comparison to the rest of their bodies. These large wings make it easy for an owl to glide for a long time without a lot of flapping, and they also allow the owl to fly quite slowly - so that it can hunt for prey on the ground below.When a normal bird flies, the air rushing over its wings makes a lot of noise, kind of a "whooshing" sound. But owls have feathers called "flutings" on the leading edge of their wings. These feathers are almost like a comb, and they comb through the air as it rushes over the wings, breaking it up and muffling the sound. Because of these special wing feathers, a huge owl can glide almost silently through the forest, watching and listening as it searches for prey. Your Assignment: Look at this photograph of a barn owl in flight and write a paragraph that describes the bird's silent search for its prey. Tips to Make Your Writing Powerful:Set the scene by appealing to your reader's senses and imagination. You could write about what it feels like to soar through the air, what the world looks like from up there, or describe the "sound" of the silence.Include descriptive details about the owl, or about its prey on the ground below.Use strong verbs to capture the action of the scene. For example, instead of saying the owl is "flying," you could use an action verb and say it is "darting" or "swooping." When you are finished with your paragraph, click on the yellow "Comments" at the bottom of this post to enter your writing. Happy writing! Photo: Major Gilbert

Cool Photo: Penguins in Sweaters!

Do you remember our story late last year about the rescue effort to save Blue Penguins, who were at risk after an oil spill of New Zealand? They have made great progress cleaning up the spill, but wild life rescuers are still collecting little sweaters, to have on hand for penguins who are rescued in the future. These penguins in their sweaters are so cute that we decided this qualified as our "Cool Photo of the Week"! When they are soaked in oil, penguins need to be prevented from trying to preen themselves, so that they won't ingest the toxic oil. And they also need help staying warm. Sweaters are the perfect solution to both of these problems, and knitters all over the world responded by making and sending penguin sweaters.

Writing Wednesday: LIN-SANITY!

Welcome to Writing Wednesday! Every Wednesday you can publish your own creative writing on the Seymour Science blog. Ready? Let's go! Background: We have been experiencing full-blown LIN-SANITY around here, since Seymour Simon is a NY Knicks fan. For those of you that don't follow basketball, 12 days ago a 23-year-old player named Jeremy Lin came off the Knicks bench to lead the team to six straight wins. Lin has more points in his first five starts (136) than either Michael Jordan or Shaquille O'Neal did when they started playing. One of the reason everyone is so surprised was that after Jeremy Lin's great senior year on the Harvard University basketball team, he was not selected in the NBA draft. He was finally picked up by the Golden State Warriors, but spent most of his first season sitting on the bench. Last year was spent in the NBA's version of the minor leagues, playing on an NBA Development League team. Although he was not a big star there, he earned a reputation for being "tough around the basket." The New York Knicks decided to give him a try, and he began this season once again sitting on the bench. Jeremy Lin has been sleeping on his brother's couch, not sure he should sign up for an apartment in NY in case he was going to be cut. Then, twelve days ago, due to a series of injuries and other problems, the Knicks needed to put him into the game. The rest is Lin-sanity history! Lin's old teammates at Harvard, by the way, say they are not surprised. The thing they remember most about Jeremy Lin is his extraordinary commitment to hard work. Your Assignment: Write one or two paragraphs about the importance of not giving up. You may describe Jeremy Lin's success, or you might just write about an experience you have had, where deciding not to give up led to a big payoff. Two simple rules: 1. Give us the best you've got in 5 minutes. That's right - five minutes of creative writing. Think of it as a word extravaganza to warm up your brain for the rest of the day! 2. Tell us your first name, the name of your school, and how old you are. Give it your best shot! When you are finished, enter your writing by clicking on the yellow "Comments" at the bottom of this blog post.

Happy Valentine's Day!

There are many ways to celebrate Valentine's Day, but that's not what these Kissing Gouramis are really doing. They are actually fighting by pressing their mouths together and pushing against each other. Valentine's Day is a holiday for people showing affection to other people; it's not really for fish. Everyone here at Seymour Science wants to wish each of our readers a very human and happy Valentine's Day!

Valentine's Day in Space

This image from the Hubble space telescope shows two galaxies, NGC 4038 and 4039, experiencing a galactic collision. They will eventual merge into a single galaxy. As they go through this process, billions of stars are being born! Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration

And the Winners Are…..!

This week we ran a contest called 3 CHEERS FOR PLUTO! for students at schools that I visited in Wayne, New Jersey, Skillman, New Jersey, and Newtown, Pennsylvania. I asked students to do some research about Pluto, and write three facts about the dwarf planet. 163 students and classes left comments on the blog with their answers. Wow! How did I come up with a winner among the many correct answers? The winner was randomly chosen by a true random number generator on the websitewww.random.org. First we listed all the entries on page after page, in order of when they were received. Then we used the random number generator, first to pick a page number and then to pick a number on the page. The winning pick wasAinsley, in Mrs. Rodgers' Class, at Sol Feinstone Elementary School. Ainsley wrote: 1. The region of its orbit is known as the Kuiper belt. 2. Puto's distance from the sun is about 3,670,050,000 miles [5,906,380,000 kilometers] 3. Pluto's surface is one of the coldest places in our solar system. The class pick, for Kindergarten through second grade, was a little different. We put each class entry on a small slip of paper, put all of the class entries into a paper bag and then I put my hand into the bag and picked up one of the slips of paper without looking. The winning slip of paper was Mrs. Doheny's 2nd grade class at Sol Feinstone Elementary School. They wrote: On August 24th, 2006 Pluto's status was changed from planet to dwarf planet. Pluto is the only planet named by a kid. Pluto has three moons. Our second grade class had so much fun researching facts about Pluto this afternoon. The children can't wait until Seymour Simon comes to visit us tomorrow!!! See you soon, Mrs. Doheny's Second Grade Class Congratulations to both winners. Ainsley will receive an autographed copy of OUR SOLAR SYSTEM, and Mrs. Doheny's class will receive an autographed copy of PLANETS AROUND THE SUN. Now, some of you very advanced planet studiers may have noticed that just a few months ago, astronomers identified a fourth moon orbiting Pluto. For now, it is just being called P4 - it is so new that it has not been given another name yet. Since it is so new, we did not disqualify any entries that said that Pluto has three moons, Charon, Nix and Hydra. For those of you who are interested, here is a recent diagram from NASA, showing Pluto's satellite system, which includes all four moons.Congratulations to everyone who entered the contest! All of your entries have been posted as comments on my blog. Look for your name and your entry on my website,www.seymoursimon.com. Some of you put your comments on stories other than the contest story, so if you don't see it there, you'll probably find your comment under another blog story. Please keep in touch by telling me about what book of mine you're reading, and what subjects you like the most! I had so much fun meeting you all last week. Thank you for your enthusiasm for paper airplanes, strange mysteries, and Pluto!